Sandrine glanced up at the clock again. She’d been sitting on the hard bench beneath the window for almost an hour. She was thirsty and uncomfortable and only her reluctance to give the supercilious desk clerk the satisfaction of watching her give up kept her there.
The police station was busy, people coming and going. Officers carrying buff folders or box files. Bursts of noise, then silence. Doors opening, closing, a sense of activity and anticipation. The same dark-haired officer she’d seen when she arrived came back into the reception area.
He raised his eyebrows in surprise. ‘Still here, mademoiselle?’
‘I don’t suppose you’ve any idea how much longer before someone might be free to see me?’
He stopped. ‘Your guess is as good as mine. Everyone’s got the wind up. Telegrams coming in all night. The girls in the exchange say the telephones haven’t stopped.’
‘Has something happened?’
He lowered his voice. ‘There’s a rumour there’s going to be a demonstration tomorrow. In support of de Gaulle.’
Their eyes met, and for a moment Sandrine saw the man behind the uniform. She smiled. He smiled back, then the official shutters came down once more.
Sandrine watched him continue on down the corridor, open a door on the right-hand side, and then he was gone.
She approached the desk clerk. ‘May I have some writing paper?’
‘What?’
‘Writing paper,’ she repeated, as if talking to a child. ‘And a pen. If it’s not too much trouble.’
He stared at her, but then leant under the desk, produced a few sheets of lined notepaper and a pencil, and passed them over without a word.
Sandrine went back to the bench. So long as she was here, she might as well make use of the time. Balancing the notepaper on her lap, she wrote the date.
Lundi, le 13 juillet 1942.
She underlined it once, then again.
Déclaration de Mlle Vidal Sandrine.
‘This is my true and freely given testament.’
She put the end of the pencil in her mouth, thought for a moment longer, then began to write.
THE HAUTE VALLÉE
‘Tell me.’
Antoine screamed again. He didn’t know where he was, he knew nothing. Nothing except the pain. The iron bar came down again, again on the back of his neck and he felt his broken bones jump. His arms were shackled and tied round the back of the chair. Blood congealed around the cuffs, rings of red and broken skin on his wrists. His right hand was swollen purple, his fingernails torn where he’d tried to get across the weir. How long ago was that? One hour, more, less? A day? He no longer knew.
‘Where is it? Where is the key?’
It had been Sunday. He remembered Sunday. Thinking about seeing his parents, heading back to his apartment ready to make the journey south. That was when they’d got him. Walking past the river. The catch on his chain had broken, he remembered that. Putting it in his pocket. So hot, even though it was early. He remembered the black Renault Primaquatre coming slowly down the road from the cimetière Saint-Michel, and pulling up. A man, well dressed, foreign, asking for directions to the Cité.
Then, nothing.
At first, in the cellar, the questions and the blows, the tightening of the rope on his wrists. Then they stopped. Left him alone for a long time, he didn’t know how long, day and night blurring one into the other. They were waiting for someone, for instructions, though Antoine didn’t know it then. Waiting for this man, he realised now.
It was morning when he escaped. Pretended to be unconscious, so they left him unguarded. Managed to climb out of the broken window and snapped the padlock on the gate. But he was too weak to get far and although he made it down to Païchérou, down to the river, on to the rocks, he hadn’t the strength. He’d slipped, fainted. The water pressing into his mouth, his nose.
He tried to remember. There’d been a girl, hadn’t there? Pulled him out of the water. It hadn’t mattered anyway. They’d come after him, brought him back here. Now, again, the drip, drip of the cellar, the bare earth under his feet.
‘Komm. If you tell me, this will stop.’
With each word, another strike with the iron bar, cutting through the silent air, the steady breathing of his captors within it, the marks on his broken body telling the story of every blow he’d received.
‘He’s passed out. Hurry.’
Antoine hoped they were talking about him, welcoming the thought that he would not have to feel any more. But a sponge was thrust into his mouth. The sour, sharp vinegar made him gag. His cracked lips recoiled in protest and he tried to twist free, but hands on his shoulders held him firm. He smelt blood and wondered if it was his own or if someone else had sat on this chair before him. Then water running over his head, his shoulders, down into his lap, shocking him into speech.
‘I don’t know . . .’
Antoine didn’t know if that was true. Hours ago, days, between the kicks and punches and the burns from the cigarettes, the smell of the singed hairs on his arms and the hiss of skin, he’d forgotten what the man wanted. None of it made sense. He didn’t know where he was. He didn’t know what he had already said.
‘Antoine,’ said the man, drawing the vowels out so softly. ‘Your friend died, you remember? You had a telegram, yes? Cast your mind back. To March 1939, remember? We found Rahn in the snow, the mountains of the Wilder Kaiser. Nothing you say can harm him now. He’s at peace. We have his diaries, all his notes, letters. He worked for us, didn’t you know that? We know that if he had left anything behind – the key – it would have been in your safe keeping, yes? The key?’
Antoine knew they were lying. If they had everything, then why were they asking him questions? He didn’t understand anything. The old man would know. He tried again to shake his head, but his bones, his muscles, nothing worked any more. Words were coming back to him, fragments of memory.
‘D-Die-Dietrich,’ he said. If he kept saying this, they would believe that there was a key, that they were looking for a key, then the secret would be kept from them at least.
‘The skeleton key, yes?’
Antoine felt the man’s breath, eager, suddenly on his face. Saw the death’s-head brooch on his lapel. Otto Rahn had worn one too. He’d written to tell him he had joined them, then nothing more until just before the end. Life became too dark after that.
‘Rahn gave you a key to look after?’ The man’s voice was closer still. ‘Where is it now, Antoine? What’s it for?’
His friends hadn’t liked Otto, but there was something about him that made you listen to his stories. Beautiful stories, clever, words taking flight. Antoine never dreamed there was any truth in them.
The old man had told him to be careful. Antoine should have listened, but he’d thought he’d outwitted them. In a way he had, though the cost was too high.
‘All true . . .’
The man’s voice, sharp again, impatient. ‘What’s that you say?’
Antoine was slipping away, like a boat coming loose of its moorings, a gentle letting go. Remembering the words written on the map. He hoped the girl was all right. Kind . . . she was gentle. She had tried to help. He didn’t know his torturer. Hadn’t seen his face, only a grey suit, and the pink, waxy skin on his left arm when he rolled up his shirt sleeves, as if he’d been burnt. The Cathars had been given to the fire, hadn’t they? The good men, Otto had called them.
The old man knew all about them.
‘Gottesfreunde,’ Antoine whispered. ‘Forgotten.’
As he said it, he realised that was true. A few months of friendship, ten years ago, eleven. Otto Rahn, a young German from Michelstadt, travelling with a Swiss friend. Antoine just out of university and with time on his hands. A chance meeting in a café, the pleasure of discovering a shared interest in the same things, treasure and local legends, an initiation into the mythology of the mountains. As 1931 tipped over into 1932, they had read and talked and smoked late into the night, going climbing in the day when the weather permitted, up to the summit of the Pic de Soularac, to the ruins of Montségur and Coustaussa, or down into the belly of the caves of Niaux and Lombrives. Brotherhood – the Fahneneid, the blood oath of the German warrior of legend – it was innocent, harmless. Otto was naïve certainly, but he didn’t think like those maniacs. He was flattered when they invited him to join them, proud of his black uniform. Later, he had become disillusioned, wanted to get out, but by then it was too late.
Ten years ago, more. Antoine had been young and understood nothing. A classics student, Latin and Greek, idealistic. He had never killed a man then. Never seen a man die. If Rahn had lived, the two of them would have been on opposite sides. Ten years. It had been one of those interludes in a life starting out. Antoine didn’t understand. Otto had died more than three years ago. Before all the madness started. So why were these men here now?
‘Sprich.’ Speak.
Antoine heard the anger in the man’s voice and flinched from it.
‘Forgotten,’ he said again, feeling the tug of sweet black sleep.
This time the blow caught him across the face. Antoine heard his nose crack, the splinter of it, then felt the blood, warm and wet, coating his dry lips, but there was no pain. Tears, of relief, slipped from his tired eyes.
‘We’re losing him,’ someone else was shouting, a voice thick with violence and cigarettes. An ugly voice.
Antoine was almost free now, floating above the torture cellar and the pain and the sheer pointlessness of it all. They couldn’t reach him. Rough hands, cold water, dragging a broken body to its feet, he was beyond them.
‘Get the doctor in here,’ the man ordered. ‘Allez, vite.’
Antoine realised he was smiling. The sound of running feet, the door being thrown open, the rustle of the doctor in his bag. Needles, light, a sharp prick, so many people pulling him this way, that.
He died ten minutes later, without revealing anything more about his friend Rahn. Without telling them anything about what he had found or what he knew. And without letting the name of Audric Baillard pass his lips.